Mouse Extra

Today we begin Mouse Extra’s special holiday series “The 12 Milestones in Disney World History”.  During this holiday season, we will look back at the 12 moments that changed or defined the Walt Disney World we know and love today.  We begin with an event that helped prove the success that was to come.

It is the classic Walt Disney story, the one that defines the man’s imagination.  There were just too many great ideas and too little space to make them all happen.  The success of Disneyland made Walt and his creative geniuses at WED Enterprises yearn for more space to stretch their legs.  He envisioned so much more for Disneyland, but he was rapidly running out of room.   And what was worse was the world outside was all too quickly invading upon his fantasy kingdom. 

The best answer was to find oodles of land somewhere on the east coast and bring the Disney brand of entertainment to a new audience.  But how would it play to people who they felt may have a different version of what made something entertaining?  That was the question they needed to answer and it was answered emphatically at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.

An enormous event that included exhibits from all over the world, it was the largest World’s Fair ever held in the United States.  But despite the dizzying amount of things to see and do, the attention turned squarely to Walt Disney.  His team created four exhibits; The Magic Skyway, Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, It’s a Small World, and the Carousel of Progress.  Here is where he brought audio-animatronics to the world and planted himself as the countries imagination expert. 

But Walt and his team also realized the answer to his question about whether or not Disney’s ideas would work on the east coast was answered with a loud “yes”.  They ate it up.  My family is from the area and those who attended still talk about how amazing and exciting it was over forty years later and how willing they were to wait on exorbitantly long lines to see Disney’s creations.  It was time to make the idea of Disney World a reality, and less then a decade later that is exactly what happened.

In Tomorrowland we see another example of the Fair’s influence on Walt Disney World.  The Carousel of Progress sits as a museum to this golden age of Disney creativity.  If you haven’t been inside for a while, go and see it again.  If you have never been on the Carousel, give it a try.  And when you do, remember that the success of this attraction, though perhaps campy and dated in our eyes now, was a large reason for why you are sitting in the Magic Kingdom in the first place.

Sure, many other factors went into deciding on green lighting the Florida project, but few can debate the effect the 1964 World’s Fair had on that decision.  Had it been a total failure, and his attractions mocked in the New York press as silly or childish, would Disney World have happened when and how it did?  Probably not, so that is why this stands as one of the great milestones in Walt Disney World history.